Before leaving the Aphrodite, Menedemos made sure Diokles would keep at least half a dozen sailors aboard her. “Wouldn't do to come back and find half our cargo had grown legs and walked off, now would it?” Menedemos said. “Not hardly, skipper, especially when we haven't got any peafowl along with us this spring,” Diokles said. “We haven't got 'em, and we—or I, anyhow—don't miss 'em, either,” Sostratos said. He'd had to care for the birds till they sold the last of them in Syracuse, and hadn't enjoyed the experience. As far as raucous, stupid bipeds go, they're even worse than sailors, he thought—a bit of fluff he wisely didn't pass on to the oarmaster. “Come along, my friends,” Kissidas repeated, more urgently than before: maybe he didn't want to be seen hanging around a Rhodian ship. Would informers denounce him to Antigonos' garrison commander? As Sostratos went up the gangplank onto the quay, he thanked Fortune and the other gods that Rhodes really was free and autonomous, and that Rhodians didn't have to worry about such nonsense. As far as the look of both buildings and people went, Kaunos might have been a purely Hellenic city. The temples were older and plainer than those of Rhodes, but built in the same style. Houses showed the world only blank fronts, some whitewashed, and red tile roofs, as they would have back home. All the signs were in Greek, Men wore thigh-length chitons; a few wrapped hitmatia over the tunics. Women's chitons reached their ankles. If prosperous or prominent women came out in public, they wore hats and veils against the prying eyes of men. “Just thinking about what might be under those wrappings builds a fire under you, doesn't it?” Menedemos murmured after one such woman walked by.